For 50 years the Chesapeake Bay Watershed has faced long-standing challenges to its poor water quality despite local successes, substantial investment, and organization. Pennsylvania is a major contributor of freshwater runoff from the Susquehanna River Basin, yet has faced lawsuits from adjacent states alleging insufficient action to address water quality. This situation is a classic collective action problem. Collective identity, an individual’s understanding that they belong to a group and hold shared consequences with group members, is a prerequisite of collective action. We suggest that the problem cannot be addressed without first raising awareness among residents that they live within a common watershed – thereby creating a watershed-based collective identity. Rooted in social identity theory and social categorization theory, we proposed a stage model of collective identity (Mainzer, Dillard, & Cole 2024) that describes four sequential stages of watershed-based identity development. The stages describe an individual’s: knowledge of the group, meaning their understanding of the basic definition of a watershed (Stage 1), knowledge of group membership, i.e. the ability to correctly name their watershed(s) (Stage 2), understanding of shared pro-environmental values among the group (Stage 3), embracing of a sense of personal consequence and interdependence with group members (Stage 4).
Supported by the Pennsylvania Water Resources Research Center, we designed knowledge-based and psychometric measures corresponding to each stage. We then validated each measure through a series of statewide surveys in Pennsylvania. Here, we present the process of developing those measures, the resulting items, and preliminary results among Chesapeake Bay Watershed and non-Chesapeake Bay Watershed residents.
Chesapeake Bay, collective identity, watershed, scale development